The Holyoke Range or Mount Holyoke Range is a traprock mountain range located in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. It is a subrange of the narrow, linear Metacomet Ridge that extends from Long Island Sound near New Haven, Connecticut, north through the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts to the Vermont border. It is also a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains. A popular hiking destination, the range is known for its anomalous east–west orientation, high ledges and its scenic character. It is also notable for its unique microclimate ecosystems and rare plant communities, as well as significant historic sites, such as the Mount Holyoke Summit House and the Horse Caves.Farnsworth, Elizabeth J. "Metacomet-Mattabesett Trail Natural Resource Assessment." (2004). PDF file. Retrieved November 20, 2007.Massachusetts DCR Retrieved December 10, 2007
Holyoke Range vs. Mount Holyoke Range Both names for the range are frequently cited by reputable published sources. For instance, both the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and the non-profit Friends of the Mount Holyoke Range use Mount Holyoke Range, while the other form, Holyoke Range, is used in several different map and guide sources (the USGS 1990 Belchertown 1:25000 scale topographic map,USGS map. Belchertown 1:25000 1990. two longstanding popular retail hiking maps published by Newall Printing,Ryan, Christopher J. "Holyoke Range State Park: Western Section." 4th ed. Map. Hamilton I. Newell Printing, Amherst 1994. the 1999 version of the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC)'s Metacomet-Monadnock Trail Guide,The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail Guide. 9th edition. The Appalachian Mountain Club. Amherst, Massachusetts, 1999 and the 1989 version of the AMC's Massachusetts and Rhode Island Trail Guide).Massachusetts and Rhode Island Trail Guide. Appalachian Mountain Club. Boston, 1989. However, the AMC's 2004 Massachusetts Trail Guide uses "Mt. Holyoke Range"Massachusetts Trail Guide Appalachian Mountain Club. Boston. 2004. and the United States Board on Geographic Names now uses "Mount Holyoke Range".United States Board on Geographic Names. Retrieved December 18, 2007.) Both names as well as the abbreviated Mt. Holyoke Range are used locally.Examples abound in local news sources and other publications. Compare: , a local advocacy group; and , a map publication of Hampshire College
Geography
The Holyoke Range, located within the towns of South Hadley, Hadley, Granby, Amherst, and Belchertown, rises steeply between and above the Connecticut River Valley below; it has an east–west orientation and is roughly long by wide at its widest point, although the steepness of the terrain makes the actual square mileage much larger. The high point of range is the summit of Mount Norwottuck, above sea level.
Notable peaks include (from west to east) Mount Holyoke at ; the Seven Sisters, a series of ridgeline knobs with a high point of ; Mount Hitchcock at ; Bare Mountain at ; Mount Norwottuck at ; Rattlesnake Knob at ; Long Mountain at ; and Harris Hill at . Round Mountain between Bare and Norwottuck has been removed by quarrying. A series of smaller, unnamed traprock hills continues from Long Mountain to the eastern end of the range. Another series of hills descends north from the range into the towns of Hadley and Amherst. Some of these have names: Tinker Hill at and Little Tinker Hill at are located at the base of Mount Hitchcock in Hadley; Mount Pollux at and Mount Castor at are between Mount Norwottuck and the center of Amherst.DeLorme Topo 6.0. Mapping software. Delorme, Yarmouth, Maine. The Metacomet Ridge, of which the Holyoke Range is a part, continues west and south across the Connecticut River as the Mount Tom Range. The Metacomet Ridge is broken to the north; the Holyoke Range is separated from the Pocumtuck Ridge, away by a relatively low-lying area punctuated with occasional rises.
The north side of the Holyoke Range drains into the Fort River, thence to the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound; the south side drains into Bachelor Brook, then into the Connecticut River.
History
Mount Holyoke, at the western edge of the range, received its name from Elizur Holyoke, a 17th-century colonial settler of the Springfield, Massachusetts, region. Folklore suggests that Holyoke named the mountain after himself. The City of Holyoke, Mount Holyoke College, and the Holyoke Range were in turn named after the mountain.Harper, Wyatt. The Story of Holyoke. Holyoke Centennial Committee, Holyoke, Massachusetts 1973.
Before 1821, very little history had been recorded about the Holyoke Range that distinguished it from the surrounding landscape. Native Americans inhabited the area around the Holyoke Range for at least 10,000 years; they grew maize, tobacco, beans, squash, and other crops in the Connecticut River floodplain, clearing small sections of forest by burning to make room for their crops.Cronin, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. 2003, Hill and Wang, New York. They hunted and fished in the area, and made tools and arrowheads from the basalt rock of the Metacomet Ridge. Tensions between the Pocumtuc tribe and colonial settlers, who began arriving in the region in the mid 17th century, reached a head in 1675 with the outbreak of King Philip's War, a conflict involving colonists and a confederacy of Native American tribes across southern New England under the leadership of the sachem Metacomet. More settlers arrived after the war ended with the defeat of the Native Americans, and by the early 19th century, most of the region's current towns had been established, and most of the land had been cleared of trees to make room for farms. Farmers were particularly attracted to the rich soils of the region—one of the few places in New England where tobacco can be grown with commercial success. Rugged highlands, such as the Holyoke Range and Mount Tom Range, although unsuitable for farming, were often harvested of timber to produce charcoal, a primary source of fuel for the steel industry prior to the extraction of coal in the mid-Appalachians. Highland areas were also burned of timber when lowland fires, set to clear land for farms, raged out of control. However, by the early 20th century, after agricultural interests shifted west and charcoaling became unprofitable, rural New England became largely forested again. A 2004 ecological resource study conducted for the National Park Service suggests that the Metacomet Ridge may have remained more-or-less forested (cleared only intermittently) throughout New England's agricultural period, thereby allowing the area to retain its biologic diversity through the 20th century.
Increasing urbanization and industrialization in 19th-century New England resulted in an opposing aesthetic transcendentalist movement characterized by the paintings of the Hudson River School of American landscape painters such as Frederic Edwin Church and Thomas Cole (who, in 1836, famously painted the Connecticut River from sketches he made from the summit of Mount Holyoke), the work of landscape architects such as Frederick Law Olmsted, and the writings of philosophers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. This philosophical, artistic, and environmental movement transformed many areas of the Metacomet Ridge (as well as other places in New England) from a commercial resource to a recreational and aesthetic resource.
Hotels, parks, and summer estates were built on the mountains from the mid-1880s to the early 20th century.*Mt. Holyoke Range Historical Timeline Cited November 20, 2007. Route 47 borders its west end. Down its middle is cut Route 116 from South Hadley to Amherst. Formerly, along the east edge of this highway ran the Holyoke-to-Amherst trolley tracks. The bed is still visible along most of its mountain route.
The Mount Holyoke Summit House In 1821, an guest cabin was built on Mount Holyoke by a local committee—one of the first New England summit houses. The property changed hands several times between 1821 and 1851, when it was bought and rebuilt as a two-story, eight-room hotel. Local entrepreneurs John and Frances French were the primary owners; between 1851 and 1900, the hotel and property were subject to a number of upgrades and related construction projects including a covered tramway to the summit of the mountain (first drawn by horse, then mechanized), a railroad from the base of the mountain to a steamboat dock on the Connecticut River, and the construction of a number of outbuildings and trails. With passenger steamship to the connecting summit railway established, the Mount Holyoke "Prospect House" became a popular tourist destination. Competing establishments were built on Mount Tom and Mount Nonotuck across the Connecticut River, and on Sugarloaf Mountain and Mount Toby to the north. The property passed hands again in the early 20th century, to chain hotelier Joseph Allen Skinner, who eventually donated the hotel and property to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for a state park in 1939 on the condition that the park be named after him (now the J.A. Skinner State Park). The summit house suffered from storm damage and lack of maintenance until the mid-1980s, when it was renovated as a museum through local volunteer efforts supported by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Other historic events
The Horse Caves, a series of sedimentary rock overhangs located many hundreds of feet beneath the summit of Mount Norwottuck, are believed to have been used as a bivouac by rebels during Shays's Rebellion of 1786. Edward Hitchcock, a former professor of geology at Amherst College with a colorful history, coined the term "Scenographical Geology" in 1841 to describe the dramatic geologic landscape of the Holyoke Range. Hitchcock renamed several of the natural features of the range, including Mount Norwottuck (originally called Hilliard Knob) and Titan's Piazza, a columnar basalt outlook on Mount Holyoke. Hitchcock is also famous for suggesting that local dinosaur tracks discovered in the Triassic sediments near the range had been produced by an ancient species of bird (the relationship between modern birds and prehistoric dinosaurs would not be established by scientists until the latter half of the 20th century). A summit of the Holyoke Range is named after Hitchcock. Every year in October since 1838, students from nearby Mount Holyoke College participate in Mountain Day. On that day, at the sound of ringing bells from Abbey Chapel on a random Autumn morning, all classes are cancelled and students hike to the summit of Mount Holyoke. On May 27, 1944, a B-24, flying a night training mission out of Westover Army Air Field in Chicopee, Massachusetts, crashed into the south flank of the range, killing all ten crewmen. A memorial plaque was placed onto the summit of Mount Holyoke to eulogize the disaster. The plaque is about east of the house, but the actual crash site is down the southern flanks in the woods. The Five Colleges Library Depository is located on the north side of Bare Mountain in the Holyoke Range, within a subterranean bunker formerly occupied by the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC). The bunker was created to provide commanders of SAC at the Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts, shelter in the event of a Cold-War-era nuclear attack. The three-story bunker features walls, a steel blast door, and is located underground.Amherst College Library Chronology "